tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post6769442331093004369..comments2018-02-24T18:37:17.159-05:00Comments on SpeEdChange: Grit Part 4: Abundance, Authenticity, and the Multi-Year MentorIra David Socolhttps://plus.google.com/100145455899090230569noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-44671377655676962912014-02-03T07:57:46.047-05:002014-02-03T07:57:46.047-05:00Bruce,
Thank you for bringing up Sudbury. As a gr...Bruce,<br /><br />Thank you for bringing up Sudbury. As a graduate of a high school created by Neil Postman, Alan Shapiro, and Charlie Weingartner at the same time <a rel="nofollow">http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-schools-1-changing-everything.html</a> and <a rel="nofollow">http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/02/chris-lehmann-alan-shapiro-and-sitting.html</a> with the same philosophies, I am a firm believer. It isn&#39;t a &quot;Sudbury&quot; model to me, its a &quot;Summerhill&quot; model and is based in both democratic ideals and trust in students, and, in the versions created in New Rochelle and Philadelphia and White Plains (et al) around 1970, a belief that children are fully capable of participating in and supporting the life of their urban communities.<br /><br />But here is the challenge - though schools like the &quot;3Is&quot; &quot;Parkway&quot; and &quot;Alpha&quot; were public schools, Sudbury-style schools are not. That&#39;s an advantage - testing, regulations, political oversight - and a disadvantage - funding for Sudbury schools, with tuitions much lower than most private schools - is even lower than that of many public schools in the states in which they operate. <br /><br />But the public/private issue is critical in terms of modeling. Over 45 years the Sudbury model has spread to include far fewer students each year than one median-size American school system educates. In two decades from, say, 1967, the &quot;open classroom/high schools-without-walls&quot; model spread to a far larger audience than that, but, because of the politics of the public realm, almost all of that was rolled back during the &quot;Bush I/Diane Ravitch&quot; time at the US Department of Education. A nightmarish counter-revolution from which we are still trying to recover.<br /><br />So the question is, how do we change the essential paradigm of education to create fundamental change throughout public education - change which redefines education in the public mind? <br /><br />Sudbury, for all of its accomplishments has never done that, any more than Summerhill changed English education, or, for that matter, the Brooklyn and Manhattan Free Schools have impacted New York City public schools.<br /><br />One of my deepest criticisms of the Charter School Movement in the US is its complete failure to be the &quot;laboratory for change&quot; that our public schools need. There is simply very little conversation between the realms - even if 95% of charters weren&#39;t conservative replications of school in 1940.<br /><br />There are those attempting to bridge the public/private divide - I urge you to follow @CurtisCFEE if you don&#39;t already - and if your school is not actively engaged in this effort I urge you to join in. Public schools can learn a great deal from Sudbury - but we must start by acknowledging that it is very different to change an existing system of schools with between 10,000 and 100,000+ students of every type - who come and go - who often lack any parental commitment to the schools&#39; ethos and goals - than to build a school from scratch for a small group. <a rel="nofollow">http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2013/10/seven-pathways-to-new-teacher.html</a><br /><br />So once we set the &quot;rules of understanding,&quot; lets get the cross-learning going.<br /><br />- IraIra Socolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01412837280249622430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-62167911115195250862014-02-02T20:39:33.654-05:002014-02-02T20:39:33.654-05:00I’m coming into this discussion in the middle and ...I’m coming into this discussion in the middle and am new to this context for the terms &quot;grit,&quot; &quot;slack,&quot; and &quot;abundance.&quot; I don’t yet know your background or context, and I haven’t read Tough’s book.<br /><br />Here’s what I do know. The Sudbury model of education addresses most if not all of the points you raise here.<br /><br />I&#39;ve worked at Alpine Valley School since 1998. When I first heard of Paul Tough, I was surprised to encounter mainstream acknowledgement that there might be more important things in school than an emphasis on so-called academics—“so-called” because, in my experience at least, the real curriculum of conventional education is compliance.<br /><br />What I particularly like about your post is that it redirects our emphasis as educators in a more potent direction. As you say, “it is essential that we first ask questions about our systems, that we first ask what we can do to stop damaging children.” Amen to that.<br /><br />You say:<br /><br />“If resilience is our goal, I suggest we need, at a minimum, three things: The abundance which allows children space, time, resources, and safety. An authenticity of task which makes effort relevant. And, I now want to add, the luxury of multi-year mentoring, multi-year adult support, in a deep and meaningful way.”<br /><br />Sudbury schooling, which has been around since the 1960s but remains relatively small and unknown, puts these three components at the very center of its program. As for abundance, our students have all the time and space they could possibly want, within structures that guard their safety. We recognize that technology, restricted in many schools, represents the tools our young people need to master, and thus Sudbury students have free access to it (subject only to rules they create and enforce, rules intended to balance individual freedom and responsibility for the well-being of the community).<br /><br />Authenticity and relevance are ensured because it is up to them, each individual student, to decide what is worth their time, what they want to learn and tackle and get better at. Sudbury believes in making schools scaled-down versions of real life, and so we operate as democracies in which students not only direct their own learning, but also have a controlling voice in how each school is run. They participate fully in making and enforcing the rules, they have a vote equal to any adult’s in deciding how to handle budgetary and personnel issues. I can&#39;t imagine a schooling model more likely to be relevant to each student.<br /><br />As incredible as this might sound, relationships and connections—multi-year mentoring, as you put it—is where the real value lies. Not only with adults, but with young people of all ages, our students learn from, teach, and support each other. Talk about the antithesis of age-based curriculum! What could be more localized than allowing each school and each student form their own program of study (which is to say, to learn from life in all its rich abundance)?<br /><br />Yes, kids are “yearning for relationship and purpose.” And empowerment. My only critique of your post is its emphasis on what we as concerned adults need to and might do. WE might alter how we teach and in what order? WE need to rethink control?<br /><br />I say, rethinking education will go nowhere unless it both involves and gives over as much control as possible to the learners themselves. We adults do must course live up to our role as mentors and guides; but until we trust the powerful curiosity and drive to mastery innate in young people, any changes we make will necessarily be limited. In the end, authenticity is in the eyes of individual students, and is not ours to fashion or hand over to them.<br /><br />It&#39;s impossible in a blog comment to do justice to each point, to tease out each nuance. So I would encourage you to look into Sudbury schooling and see how it relates to your work. Please let me know if I can help at any point. Bruce Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10135953674828082808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-9522147094568369382014-02-02T20:27:50.574-05:002014-02-02T20:27:50.574-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Bruce Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10135953674828082808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-66488820185123687762014-02-01T13:01:03.582-05:002014-02-01T13:01:03.582-05:00Tony,
I think any sense of &quot;minimum&quot; in...Tony,<br /><br />I think any sense of &quot;minimum&quot; in terms of abundance is only a reality check. Some schools are so lacking in resources - many operating on under $7000/yr per student - that, well, we do what we can do. But as I said on Grant Lichtman&#39;s blog, for students with nothing, a little can seem like a lot. So I think that&#39;s always a place to begin. Until the pressure of total scarcity is removed, I&#39;m not sure what else works.<br /><br />But really, I believe that we can do all three, right now (or by September) in every school. It is simply a matter of shifting our personal priorities to match the needs of our students. Part of this - in high schools, even in middle schools, means dropping the professorial - narrow expertise - model. One might think about themself as a chemistry teacher, but it is probably far more important to think about oneself as a &quot;science leader.&quot; That would take a bunch of work - I&#39;m not kidding anyone - but it might be less stressful than the current shifts we ask our children to make year after year - actually, hour after hour.<br /><br />Finally, I think &quot;relationship-driven feedback&quot; leaves out crucial components of mentoring. The feedback only becomes valuable when it is provided within a context of care and acceptance. I&#39;ve found that to be true in every coaching experience I&#39;ve ever had - really - in every effective learning experience I&#39;ve ever had, on either side of the equation.<br /><br />- IraIra Socolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01412837280249622430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-87137998150827838052014-02-01T10:44:16.201-05:002014-02-01T10:44:16.201-05:00Thanks for this post, Ira. I appreciate the opport...Thanks for this post, Ira. I appreciate the opportunity to better understand your perspective.<br /><br />I appreciate the clarity of your description of the three-pronged minimum that learners need- abundance, authenticity, and the multi-year mentor- in order to promote a goal of resilience. One thing I&#39;m wondering about is your use of the word &quot;minimum&quot; in reference to those prongs. Does that imply that &quot;We can&#39;t take this on without these things?&quot; <br /><br />Because I feel like we can.<br /><br />When I read your post, what I&#39;m seeing in those three facets is: resource availability (including time &amp; space), relevance in learning work, and feedback from someone who knows us. <br /><br />It strikes me that &quot;access to what&#39;s needed&quot; (resource availability) is a lower threshold than &quot;access to more than what&#39;s needed&quot; (abundance) - does that mean that resilience cannot be a goal when necessary resources are available?<br /><br />Also, the multi-year mentor concept sounds to me like a fantastic opportunity for any learner. What I&#39;m wondering is, must it necessarily be a multi-year mentor in order to develop a relationship that involves a feedback loop that promotes development of resilience?<br /><br />Finally, in regard to the distinction of &quot;school-tough&quot; vs &quot;life-tough&quot; aspect that connects the relevance of school work to something that feels authentic to the student, I think this facet is where we can make the most change the most quickly in terms of promoting resilience. When school work looks more like life work, the resilience is more likely to develop. I would argue that we make this the &quot;lead dog&quot; in your proposal, allowing it to pull the rest along the path.<br /><br />In summary, I appreciate your thinking on this topic and how you&#39;ve shared your story about your own learning. In terms of a &quot;call to action&quot; for others, I would propose a shift in the title from &quot;Abundance, Authenticity, and the Multi-Year Mentor&quot; to &quot;Authentic Work, Available Resources, and Relationship-Driven Feedback,&quot; where Authentic Work becomes our key initial focus.<br /><br />I welcome your feedback on this (and anyone else&#39;s, as well).tborashhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08551816882936157012noreply@blogger.com